ROJO supported drilling the Great Lakes for oil before he was against it

BP stock holder and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Ron Johnson somehow managed to pull the wool over the Journal Sentinel editorial board’s eyes. Johnson failed to directly answer their question on whether or not he favored drilling in the Great Lakes for oil. He said it should be “done responsibly,” leaving us to speculate on what that means. To the editorial board, that somehow translated to utter and complete opposition to drilling in the Great Lakes, although it Johnson over a month of being hammered in the news and on blogs to get off his duff and actually say something.

Was Deepwater Horizon built “responsibly”? This guy owns hundreds of thousands of dollars in BP and Exxon stock. He profited while Tony Hayward fiddled. Johnson should have the integrity to say flat out what he thinks about drilling in the Great Lakes for oil. He’s doing himself and the public a disservice with his continuing evasions.

Unfortunately, we should expet nothing different from Johnson. We need to remember that Johnson has hired Darrin Schmitz, the man whom James Arndt described as being “responsible for what may be the only Wisconsin campaign ad still causing controversy two years after airing — the Gableman campaign’s attack on Louis Butler, called a purposeful distortion by the Journal-Sentinel.” The editorial board should recall that Ron Johnson employs the king of smears before they lament the slurry of attack ads in the campaign.

Appropos of nothing: In a live action murder mystery that was staged a few years ago, I played Konstaintin Ilyich Lenineyeveitskii, a Russian oil executive who was fixated on drilling in Lake Michigan. I think he and Ron Johnson would have gotten along otchen korosho.